"The furry bastards 're too quick to spear when they're paying attention." "Yeah," said another cheerful skirmisher. "I always knew cavalry pukes must be good for something." Garric's borrowed mount lay in a pile of furry bodies. The gelding had died with his teeth clamped on a ratman's shoulder. In his death throes he'd almost bitten the creature's arm off. "Ought to put up a monument to that horse," Carus said. "For valorous conduct in battle." I don't think Attaper would agree, Garric thought. The skirmisher who'd finished the female rat wiped his hatchet clean and turned to Garric. "You ought to have that leg looked at, buddy," he said. "Hey, if it'd got the artery, he wouldn't be standing, right?" said his fellow. He knelt and lifted the skirt of Garric's tunic. "Still, let me have a look at it." "You bloody fools!" bellowed Attaper. "That's your prince!" "Bugger me if it ain't!" said the man thrusting the hatchet away under his belt.
"Yes, milord," said Garric, turning with a smile. He'd have to wipe his sword before sheathing it, but from the way the gelding had sprayed blood it didn't seem any of this group of rats had enough clean fur for the long blade. "And they saved my life, not to put too fine a point on it." He grinned at the skirmishers. "Even if they did think I was just another cavalry puke." "Sorry if, ah…," said the standing man. "Some of those javelins came a bit close." "Not as close as the rats were going to come if you hadn't been around,"
Garric said. The other skirmisher stood. "I think your leg's going to be fine, b-b-prince," he said. "But the surgeon'll want to stitch it up when you get back to camp." "Yes, he bloody well will," snarled Attaper. He was panting and red-faced from running a good half mile, obviously expecting a worse result than he'd found when he reached his prince. "And we're going to get you back there as soon as somebody drags a horse down here for you, your highness." Garric looked up the valley. The prisoners had disappeared with their guards, and the only ratmen visible were the hundreds of furry corpses. "All right, we'll head back," Garric said. Much as he hated it, he had to agree with King Carus' cold logic: he couldn't go after the prisoners with the troops he had available. Cavalry was obviously useless, and the skirmishers had taken casualties also. If there were a thousand ratmen concealed around the dogleg, they'd massacre their pursuers. He looked at the carnage, the bloody, stinking carnage, around him. "Well," said Carus. "I wouldn't call it a victory, but I'm glad to have learned this before we tried a cavalry charge in a major battle. Because odds are, we'd have been leading it ourself. Right, lad?" Right.
Chapter 10 While Sharina was in meetings, she had only the others present to deal with. In between, however, she had to run a gauntlet of clerks, courtiers, and petitioners as she moved through the halls and passages. It was no different this time. The fact Sharina was leaving her final appointment of the day-on road improvements which were absolutely necessary but either a huge financial drain or a political disaster if forced labor was used-and hoping to have a light meal in her suite before getting some sleep, just meant that she was more tired and hungry than she'd have been at midmorning. Though she'd been hungry and very tired at midmorning, too. "Your highness, about the canal project/the new barracks/the position for my nephew?" She strode past them in a cocoon of Blood Eagles. Her escort made sure nobody actually touched Princess Sharina, but they couldn't shut off the voices unless they simply clubbed everybody out of her way.
History said tyrants like Hawley the Seneschal and King Morail One-Eye had done just that. Sharina sighed. The reality of being princess gave her a different and altogether most positive appreciation of men whom she as a scholar had regarded as brutes. There was usually a dense clot outside the door she would next enter. That was true this time also, but all but one of those waiting were fit, very sturdy-looking men in identical neat tunics and identical grim expressions. The exception was Master Dysart. The agents parted when the Blood Eagles arrived; they weren't here to fight, just to hold a prime location and to keep everybody else at a discrete distance from their superior while he talked to the princess. "Your highness, if you could sign these tonight…?" the spymaster said, waving a sheaf of documents on vellum. Sharina doubted whether there was anybody in the palace who didn't know that Dysart was Lady Liane's deputy, but the colorless little man kept up the pretense that he was a senior clerk in the Chancellery. "Yes, of course," said Sharina, narrowly avoiding another sigh. Secret intelligence was part of her present duties, but experience had already taught her that the details of road construction were likely to be more interesting. "We can take care of that inside, Master Dysart." Sharina opened the door herself. Burne sat upright on a table in the reception area as Diora fed him a round of hard bread. The rat was perfectly capable of feeding himself, but Sharina had noticed that the maid was more comfortable thinking of Burne as a smart pet than she might've been if she'd appreciated what he really was. Sharina grinned. Whatever that was, of course, but Burne was certainly more than a smart pet. "A late night, your highness," Diora said as she turned to greet Sharina. "What-oh!"
Dysart closed the door firmly behind him, then shot the bolts. Diora hadn't realized her mistress wasn't alone when she greeted her with what many would consider scandalous informality from a maid. She was obviously embarrassed. "I have some papers to go over with Master Dysart," Sharina said nonchalantly. "Set out my nightgown, Diora. And shut the door behind you, if you please." The bedroom was already prepared-of course-but it was a quiet excuse to prevent awkwardness with the spymaster. Dysart probablywas scandalized by Sharina's friendly relationship with her maid, but the chance of him talking to another living soul was less than that the huntsmen and stags painted on the sidewall would. On the other hand, Dysart would refuse to speak in front of Diora however much Sharina said she trusted the maid.
Perhaps he was right. Burne jumped down from the table and padded over to them. "I'm coming up," he warned, then hopped to Sharina's sash for a foothold and finally to her shoulder. "There haven't been any scorpions in the suite all day," he said in a conversational voice.
"I'm not sure whether they're giving up or just planning something more subtle… but for now at least, I think we have privacy."
Dysart waited, watching Diora till the bedroom door thumped shut. He grimaced-whether at the maid or the rat, Sharina couldn't tell-and said, "We're going to raid a gathering of Scorpion worshippers at midnight, your highness. We'll be using men from my own department and a company of soldiers in civilian dress. You'd said you wanted to be kept informed of progress, so-" He shrugged. "-I came to tell you." A servant watching the waterclock in the square outside the palace rang the hour with a mallet and a set of chimes. It lacked a half hour of midnight, which was time enough. "Right," Sharina said. "Master Dysart, send a messenger to Captain Ascor and tell him to report to me immediately. He's to be without equipment and wearing a blue cloak to cover his sword." "Your highness," Dysart said in concern, "Lord Tadai has already provided for soldiers. I don't believe adding Blood Eagles is advisable." "I'm not adding Blood Eagles," Sharina said, tugging at her laces. "I'm-" This wasn't doing any good! She needed help. "Diora, come help me get out of this!" she called. "And bring the Pewle knife!" "Your highness?" said Dysart, his eyes widening. "I'm coming with you, Master Dysart," Sharina said. "And while Captain Ascor won't like it, at least with Lord Attaper's deputy present, I won't have to sneak out of this room to prevent the whole squad on guard from tramping along with me in their full gear!" *** Garric stood within a coarse brushwood fence, watching as Tenoctris examined the dead ratman that they'd brought back to the camp. All the screen did was permit the soldiers not to watch wizardry if it made them uncomfortable-as it did almost all laymen. They'd strapped the corpse to a lance carried by pairs of skirmishers who traded off the burden. Lord Waldron had thought there'd be at least one horse that didn't mind the rats' smell, but he'd apparently been wrong. Master Ainbor-who'd chuckled to be referred to as "Master"-had volunteered that his men wouldn't mind carrying one of the rats they'd killed. He'd been quite obviously twitting Waldron, but Garric-and Waldron, from his sour nod-figured Ainbor had a right to do that. His skirmishers had saved the lives of scores of the cavalry, not to mention the life of Prince Garric. "We might've fought our way clear, lad," Carus muttered. Right, the way you swam to shore when a wizard drowned your fleet a thousand years ago, Garric thought. No, I'm pretty clear on why I'm standing here, and it's not because I have a strong sword arm. As it was, Garric's left thigh throbbed as though a horsefly had bitten him. Master Daciano, the Blood Eagles' surgeon, had sewn shut the lips of the wound and then bandaged over it a poultice of lettuce which was supposed numb the pain. Maybe that was true, but if so it would've beenvery uncomfortable without the drug.
Tenoctris had said she'd do something for him as soon as she had a chance. Right now, both she and Garric thought that the first priority was learning as much as possible about the rat army of Palomir.
"That's odd," Garric said. "The rat isn't as big as it was when it was alive. As any of them were. Can it be shrinking, Tenoctris?" Instead of answering, Tenoctris murmured a spell of which Garric caught only a few snatches: "… sethri saba…" Blue light sparkled over the corpse and around the edges of the pentagon the wizard had drawn on the ground with corn meal. For a moment wizardlight drew an image of the ratman as it had been when a javelin took it through the throat: half again as tall as the present figure and several times the bulk.
Garric said, "Yes, that's-" The image becamedifferent instead of changing. The sparkling azure shell of a young man with big bones and a vacant expression swelled about the furry corpse. He looked ordinary, a farm laborer or a common soldier. Garric had never met him, but he'd met the type a thousand of times. The dusting of light dissolved into the air. Garric found himself blinking away orange afterimages: the blue shimmer had been brighter than he'd realized until it vanished. Tenoctris rose and turned to face him. The spell she'd cast hadn't completely drained her the way it would've done the Tenoctris whom Garric had first met: an old woman with a great deal of wisdom but limited power. Nonetheless the tightness at the corners of her eyes hinted that what she'd just done had required effort, even for the demon her will had bound within her. "They're not shrinking, exactly," she said. The weariness was evident in her voice also, though it gained strength with every syllable. "They're returning to what they'd been before the rite that turned them into warriors." "An incantation, you mean?" Garric said. "A wizard enchanted ordinary rats and made them as big as men?" "Not a wizard," Tenoctris said. "And not a priest either, except that as a priest he summoned the God. It was the God Franca who turned rats into ratmen, Garric. A very evil God."
"Ah," said Garric. He started to speak further, then swallowed the words. "Of course we can fight a God, lad," said the ghost, answering the unvoiced question. Carus smiled with grim insouciance. "I don't see any way we can win, but that doesn't stop us trying." Garric looked at the corpse again; it was smaller yet. From the way it stank, the extra bulk was being lost in the form of noxious gases. Garric grimaced. He said, "Tenoctris, do you need this further? Because if you don't…?" "What?" she said, looking over her shoulder with a critical expression. "Oh, yes, you can bury it. And I have no more incantations for the present, so I suppose we can go outside-" She nodded to the screen of brush. "-this." It struck Garric that Tenoctris, though born to an aristocratic family, paid almost no attention to her surroundings except as they had bearing on something she wanted to accomplish. A peasant might have ignored the stench because he was used to worse; Tenoctris had simply been oblivious of the fact the corpse stank. The fence curled past itself like the coils of a snail's shell. Garric stepped out the open end and said to his aide, "Lerdain, have a detail burn the offal outside the camp. They can use this-" He patted the screen they no longer needed. "-for fuel if they like." The camp was crowded and though as sanitary as possible-by Carus' order through Garric's lips, the latrines were dug before the troops were released to build personal shelters-it was a trampled, barren waste. It would've been far worse if it'd been raining. "A soldier lives in dust or mud," Carus said. "Unless the winter's particularly cold and there's ice instead. Even then it's mud inside the tents and around cookfires. If he's got a tent and a cookfire." Garric laughed and said aloud, "Who'd be a soldier, eh?"
Tenoctris looked at him. "Who indeed?" she said. "But why do you mention it now?" "Because…," Garric said, answering both the rhetorical question and the real one. "A soldier is told where to go and who to fight. He doesn't have to think about anything, so he's without responsibility for the result. Even if he's killed, he's not responsible for it. Whereas-" He looked into the wizard's eyes. "-I'm responsible for defeating an empire that turns rats into soldiers. And I know how fast rats breed." "Your highness, if I might have a moment with you," said Lord Acer, newly appointed to the command of an Ornifal cavalry regiment. There was no question whatever in his tone.
"The food-" "Master Acer!" Garric said. He was angry and frustrated at the greater situation. It was probably a good thing that this young fop was providing a legitimate outlet, though Garric wouldn't release his feelings- King Carus laughed at the thought. -with a sweep of his sword, the way his ancestor had been known to do. "I am in conference with Lady Tenoctris, on whom the survival of mankind depends. Report to Lord Waldron, if you will, and inform him that you're to be reassigned to an infantry regiment at Pandah as of this moment!"
Acer's mouth dropped open. Other aides, waiting to talk to the prince when he was free, stifled laughs-or didn't, in the case of Lord Lerdain, a husky youth and the son of the Count of Blaise. If Acer wanted a duel, Lerdain was very much the boy to give him one. Acer went pale and stumbled blindly away. He'd have tripped over a tent rope if another officer hadn't guided him around it. "That was excessive," Garric muttered. Tenoctris shrugged. "My mother always told me that high birth doesn't exempt one from basic courtesy," she said. "I'm inclined to agree with her, though it's not something I worry about a great deal." She cleared her throat and resumed, "You're right that we can't attack the problem by preventing Palomir from finding rats. That's only one aspect of what's going on, though. The rats provide a physical core around which the priest and his God can form a warrior. He also needs human souls to animate the forms.
Otherwise they'd still be rats-large ones, but no more dangerous or disciplined than so many wolves." "We've heard that the priests are sacrificing everyone they capture," Garric said. His lips moved as though he were sucking on a lemon. "That's why, then? To make an army of rats?" They were standing in the middle of the camp, close to the headquarters tent. The location was about as private-and comfortable-as anything available. The guards kept everyone else out of earshot, which a tent's canvas walls would not. Not that it seemed to matter whether anybody overheard them… "Not in the way you mean it," Tenoctris said. "The blood sacrifice increases Franca's ability to affect events in the waking world, but the souls themselves are those of the dead." She grinned. Tenoctris had always had a bright smile and a whimsical sense of humor. "The innocent dead, I suppose you might say," she said. "Though I don't know that any human being is completely innocent. The dead weren't worshippers of Franca and His siblings, at any rate." She nodded back to where they'd been. Lord Lerdain watched proprietarily as a Blaise file-closer and a squad of armsmen under his command tramped toward the main gate, carrying the remains of the ratman on the mat of brush that had concealed it. "Any more than the rats who supplied the physical form were Franca-worshippers, you see," she concluded. Garric nodded. "All right," he said. "I understand the situation. What can we do to change it?" "We need to prevent the priest behind this," Tenoctris said,
"from haling souls out of the Underworld. We need to close the Gate of Ivory. And that will require a very particular hero." Garric lifted his sword slightly and let it slide back, unconsciously checking to be sure that it wouldn't bind in the scabbard if he needed to draw it quickly. "Well, I don't know that I'm particular enough," he said.
"But I'll try." The wizard laughed merrily, making those waiting beyond the line of Blood Eagles look up eagerly. "Garric, in most respects you'd be ideal for the task," she said. "You lack one necessary attribute, however: you're not dead. The late Lord Munn is therefore a better choice." "I, ah…," said Garric. "Can I help you reach Lord Munn, then?" "If you mean, 'Can I help you go to the place where Lord Munn's body rests,'" Tenoctris said, "no; I'll get us there. But Lord Munn won't accept orders from a woman, not even a woman who's a wizard-" She smiled, but the harshness of her expression was very unusual for Tenoctris. "-and who has the power to plunge his soul beneath the deepest Hell. Of course, if Lord Munn did not have such a strong, ah, will, he wouldn't be any good to us. That will require the presence of a warrior king." Garric grinned and stretched.
"Then take me to him, milady," he said. Tenoctris nodded. "There's a sacred grove within a mile," she said. "It focuses a useful amount of power. We'll go now, if you're ready." "Lord Attaper!" Garric called.
"Lady Tenoctris and I are leaving the camp immediately, and I suspect you'll want us to have an escort." *** Not even Chalcus could climb a smooth rock wall and shove that roller out of the way, thought Ilna as she looked at the roof of the cave. It was solid black; only memory told her where the opening might be. But I wish he was here. She lowered her eyes to where Usun probably was, though she couldn't see him either. "My name is Ilna os-Kenset," she said. "A wizard named Brincisa lowered me into this cave to fetch the box you were in. She left me here when I wouldn't send the box up ahead of me." She sniffed and added, "She'd have left me anyway, obviously. Well, this way I have company. Besides the ghoul." The wizened little man laughed like an angry squirrel. "Oh, you have much more than mere company, Ilna!" he said. "You have Usun!
And as for that Brincisa-" He snapped his fingers. "-she fancies herself a wizard, true, but Hutton could stand her on her head when he wanted to. He did that! Hutton had me, you see." Ilna thought of the last time she'd seen Hutton; probably the last time anybody would see Hutton. Smiling faintly she said, "It doesn't seem to have done him a great deal of good. Unless his final wish was to become dinner for a ghoul." As Ilna's eyes adapted, she became aware of a faint blue glow in the direction the ghoul had disappeared. She heard or at least felt a low hum. She couldn't tell where it came from or even be sure it really existed. Usun cackled again. "Oh, no, Hutton had great plans!" he said in his harsh, high-pitched voice. "He didn't really die, you know." "He certainly seemed to be dead, Master Usun," Ilna said tartly. "Even before the ghoul began to eat him." "Ilna, I'll burst with laughing!" Usun said, chortling loudly enough to make it seem a possibility. "You're right, you're right, but Hutton didn't imagine you. Well, who could, eh?" He paused. Ilna could now see a hint of the little man, squatting on his haunches at her feet. He was doing something with his hands-coiling the thin filament that'd bound the box to Hutton's corpse, she suddenly realized. "He really did stand his wife on her head, you know," Usun said confidentially. "Stood her there, dropped her, and warned her that he'd do it again if she annoyed him. But maybe Brincisa wasn't so very thick, eh? She was sharp enough to fetch you and turn the tables on Hutton once and for all. He thought he was so clever, but now where is he?" "He was dead when I met him," Ilna said irritably. "When I first saw him, that is.
The ghoul started eating the corpse, but it didn't kill him." Usun looked up. "Not really dead, no," he said. Familiarity didn't make his voice more attractive. "Hutton froze time in all this cavern. He sent his soul into the Underworld to gain knowledge that he called wisdom."
He laughed again. "Wisdom!" he said. "But Hutton knows better now, eh?
He thought he'd return to his body in three days. He'd rule the waking world, he thought. Rule the waking world indeed! But you broke the spell and freed the ghoul when you cut Hutton's soul away from his body." Ilna held strands of yarn in her left hand. She could plait a pattern that would direct her next action. She wouldn't be able to see it, but she didn't need to see fabric to understand it more clearly than an educated person like Garric would gain from a long written description. On the other hand, there was another way which might provide more information still. "Master Usun," she said, "I want to get out of this cave before the ghoul or something worse comes back."
She coughed. "And if there's water that's safe to drink here," she added, "I'd like to find that even sooner." "We'll have to dispose of the ghoul in order to get out, but we'd want to do that anyway," said the little man with an enthusiasm Ilna didn't share. "The first thing we'll do is scout the territory. You say that he carried off Hutton's body?" "Yes," said Ilna, frowning as she considered the matter. "I don't think the light here is good enough for him to see my patterns clearly. If we can build a fire, though, I can hold him while you hamstring him with a dagger or whatever from the floor here." "A bold plan and a clever one, Ilna," Usun said, "but you're wrong about being able to hold the ghoul. You think he's a beast, do you not?" "Of course he's a beast," Ilna snapped. "I just watched him bite a man's face off. The fellow deserved to have his face eaten, but that doesn't make the thing that did it any less of an animal. And I've held other creatures, bigger ones, while Ch-ch… while my companions killed them." "The ghoul, as he now is…," Usun said quietly. He was standing upright with the long filament a shimmering coil in his right hand. "Was a wizard in a former age, Ilna. A very powerful wizard, and that age was longer ago than even I can count. He tried to defeat death through his art and thought he had, but…" He laughed. His glee had a cruel undertone, though Ilna didn't suppose she was one to complain about someone taking pleasure in the ill fortune of an enemy.
And the ghoul was certainly no friend of hers. "By trying to cheat death, he made himself a thing of death," Usun went on. "I wonder if he still thinks he won, eh? For thousands of years he's eaten the dead that are given to him, so that he won't come to the surface to hunt the living. He's not to be held by wizardry, Ilna. Not even by such great wizards as ourselves." Ilna scowled in disgust. "He's human, then?" she said, just to be sure. Usun hadn't said that in so many words, and it might make a difference. "He's as human as I am," Usun replied. He cackled again. "Oh, that's a fine joke, eh? But-" He looked up at Ilna. She didn't need to see his expression to be able to imagine it clearly. "The past doesn't matter, eh?" he said. "What matters is now, and we're going to hunt him down and end his little games, yes? Because he's in our way, and because we're great hunters, you and me." Ilna sniffed. She looked upward again. Though her eyes were adapting to the blue glow, she still couldn't see the roof of the cave. Nor would it have helped if she could. "Well, Ilna?" the little man said. "There are swords here. You can take one." "I don't have any use for a sword," Ilna said. She reached into the darkness and found the loose tangle of the rope she'd been lowered by. She coiled it in quick loops, each one precisely the size of all the others. "All right," she said. "I don't think we'd gain by waiting here and hoping that the stone rolls itself back, so we may as well hunt this ghoul."
"Oh, yes, thegreatest hunters!" said Usun. He trotted toward the source of the glow. Ilna followed taking one stride for three of his. *** Cashel blinked. They'd stepped from Dariada into a rocky canyon suffused with smoky yellow light. The air was hotter than what they'd left in the sunlit square, and sulfur bit the back of Cashel's throat with each breath. He stepped clear of the two women and spun the quarterstaff as he checked all directions. His butt caps trailed blue wizardlight, piercingly bright in this yellow dusk. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were already prickling at the presence of wizardry. There were goats, which didn't matter. They were herded by things that weren't goats andsure weren't human. "Are those demons, Rasile?" Liane asked calmly. She'd slung her satchel behind her and held the knife ready in her hand. Cashel hawked up phlegm and spat toward a bristly growth that might be grass. Anything wet must be welcome in this place. Besides the maybe-grass, there were bushes that looked a little like the century plants he'd seen on Pandah before the Change, and there were full-sized trees farther up the cliffs. Those last were tall but spindly, and instead of leaves they had clumps of spines. "They think of themselves as human beings, Liane," the wizard said. "They would be as bad as demons if we could not protect ourselves, but the same is true of many of those you consider human beings. Or I do." The creatures had four legs with sharp hoofs, and the hands on their two arms had as many fingers as a sea anemone.
Their bodies seemed to be covered with horn like insects, but when Cashel stared at the nearest one, it flattened against the rock wall.
It was light gray when he first saw it, but squeezed onto the rock it took on a mottled yellowish pattern that made it hard to see even though he knew it was there. Hooting in high-pitched voices, a handful of the creatures came toward Cashel and his friends. They leaped over the rocks and bobbed their necks up and down. Each of them probably weighed as much as Liane, but their heads were small for the bodies and sort of wedge-shaped the way a possum's is. They didn't seem to have weapons; but there was a lot of them, if they knew what they were doing. "Tell me if something comes from the back!" he shouted to the women as he stepped between them and the little demons. Funny. The goats seemed normal enough, but Cashel had never seen anything that looked like the creatures tending them. He kept the quarterstaff spinning, but he was picking which of the creatures to strike first and who to pop next and next. You didn't go into a fight swinging wildly, not and expect to win; and Cashel always expected to win. The demons clacked to a halt well out of the quarterstaff's reach; their hooves on the rocks sounded like gravel spilling down the sloping face of the seawall at Barca's Hamlet. They even stopped hooting, though they whispered to each other and sometimes waved their hands. Had they just been bluffing when the charged? "We come as friends, People of the Valley," Rasile called. "We come as allies." "You come to prey on us!" shrilled the midmost of the group that'd rushed Cashel a moment ago. "The Lord preys on us daily!" another demon said. "You will join him and eat us all up!" Cashel could hear the words clear enough, though it sounded like the demons were whistling instead of speaking.
They didn't have lips that he could see. The goats, white-faced with dirty gray hides from the neck back, went on with their business of scraping a meal from this rocky waste. Cashel didn't like goats, but they seemed to make a living here and he'd never known a sheep that'd could've done it. He hacked again, though he didn't spit; he might need the moisture soon. The back of his throat felt like somebody'd taken a wood rasp to it. "We've come to free you from the Lord,"
Rasile said. "In exchange you will guide us to the tomb of the hero Gorand." Cashel took a quick glance and saw that Liane was keeping an eye on what was happening behind them. Nothing was, but he was glad for her doing that. He really wanted to keep his eyes on the nearest group. "You are lying to us, demon," the leader of the, well, demons said. "They are lying," said the other four in chorus. "They come to prey on us, like the Lord does." "Our race is at an end," the leader said. "No one can defeat the Lord." A descant of high voices keened, echoing faintly. All of the demons in the valley were howling like their children had died. There were more of them than Cashel had imagined at first; it was only when they moved that he could tell them from the rocks. "No one can defeat the Lord!" the leader repeated. "We will all be eaten by the Lord and these new demons come to plague us."
"No one can defeat the Lord!" said his companions. "And yet," said Rasile, "we shall." She turned to smile at Cashel. "Are you ready, Warrior Cashel?" she asked. "Yes ma'am," Cashel said. "Where do we find this Lord, please?" "I think he's found us," Liane said, pointing with her left hand toward a blotch of light the color of rust. It was half a furlong distant, near a pair of the little demons flattened against the wall of the canyon. "Yes," agreed Rasile. Cashel nodded and started toward the light as it flickered, swelling rapidly. *** Sharina wore a pair of simple tunics and a nondescript gray cloak-borrowed from Diora-over them to conceal not only the Pewle knife but Burne. The rat rode in a fold of her outer tunic, his little nose wrinkling excitedly at smells that passed Sharina unremarked.
"Oh, my!" he'd murmur, and, "Now, who'd have imagined that?" Sharina thought of asking the rat what was of such interest in this grubby city, but she figured he'd tell her if there were something he thought she should know. She had enough on her mind already. Sharina was in the middle of a group of twenty men, all of them soldiers except for Dysart and three attendants. She'd been wrong to expect that at least a few of the troops would still be wearing the hobnailed sandals which on these stone pavers would send a ringing warning several blocks ahead: they'd donned either soft boots or clogs. Prester and Pont, the regiment's camp marshals, weren't with this detachment, but Sharina suspected the way the troops were prepared for their assignment had a lot to do with those old veterans. The clop of wooden soles-Sharina wore clogs herself-could be heard at a distance also, but noise alone wasn't a problem. The clang of many hobnails together cried "Army!" to everyone in earshot. Captain Ascor was at her side. He wore a grim expression and she didn't need to be a soothsayer to know that the hand he kept under his cloak was clutching a bare sword. Ascor had winced, but he hadn't argued when Sharina told him what she was going to do. She'd offered him a plan which, though he probably thought was insanely dangerous for Princess Sharina, showed a willing to compromise with a bodyguard's sensibilities. The Blood Eagles had learned that guarding Garric and his sister was a different business from the days when Valence III hunched in his room and drank morosely with friends. Dysart glanced over his shoulder to check where Sharina was, then paused for a moment so that she came alongside him. "The graveyard where they're meeting is to our right at the next intersection," he said. "Less than a half block. There are three other teams approaching at the same time." Or so we hope, Sharina thought.
They weren't concerned with the individual worshippers, who had nothing to tell. She was hoping to catch the man preaching, though.
According to Dysart, he was a former priest of the Shepherd named Platt. Where Dysart or Tadai could identify particular leaders, they'd been priests of the Shepherd before being won over to the new heresy.
Aloud she said, "I'm surprised that there's a graveyard within the city. They've been outside the walls everywhere I've been in the past.
I guess the pirates who ruled here weren't so superstitious." "They weremore superstitious than honest folk," Burne said unexpectedly.
"Well, what passes for honest folk. This graveyard's newer than the rest of Pandah." "Master Burne," Dysart said quietly. If he felt any emotion about what he was saying, he certainly kept it concealed. "The Sultans of Pandah back for seven generations are buried on this particular site." "Yes, but ithad been outside the walls before the Change, when the sultans of your age ruled a sleepy trading port,"
Burne said sharply. "You know how graveyards concentrate power, though. This burial ground and several others ripped through the fabric of the past. That's why they're in the middle of an ancient pirate fortress now." The rat laughed. "If you found human teeth in a hog's stomach, Master Dysart," he said, "would you claim that they'd grown there?" "That's enough," Sharina said as the party reached an irregularly shaped plaza with a dry fountain in the middle. She spoke to end the squabble, but as soon as she did she heard the preacher they were hoping to arrest. "Brothers and sisters in the one God, in the true Lord of Existence," Platt whined in a nasal voice. "The gods of the past are dead. The future is Lord Scorpion's!" There must be a hundred or more listeners crowded close to the preacher. Low altars were built out from the fronts of the large tombs in the middle of the graveyard. The family of each deceased was expected to use them for offerings of wine and on the anniversary of his death. Platt stood on one of them, wearing a bleached wool robe that seemed to glow in the moonlight. The soldiers carried truncheons for this raid, though they wore their short infantry swords as well. From all reports, the Scorpion worshippers were planning the violent overthrow of the kingdom. Sharina wasn't going to order a massacre of frightened, deluded people-but neither was she going to disarm soldiers who might be facing deadly weapons themselves on the kingdom's behalf. "Only those who serve Lord Scorpion will be spared agonizing stings in this world and eternal torment in the world to come," Platt cried. He seemed to be looking upward, not toward the crowd beneath him. "You are the chosen, brothers and sisters! You are the wise ones who see the truth already." The ashes of the common people of Pandah-those wealthy enough to have memorials at all-were buried in loculi, stone boxes three feet long and a foot in width and depth. They were clustered as near as possible to the row of sultans' tombs, but after generations they covered most of the field set off for burial. The boxes were carved from Pandah's soft yellow limestone and weathered quickly. Within a few generations most had crumbled to shards and loose gravel that Sharina couldn't tell in the moonlight from the calcined bones of those interred. Burne leaped from the fold in Sharina's tunic. She caught a flash of him darting among the boxes; then he vanished among the legs of the crowd. She grimaced in surprise, then drew the Pewle knife. She probably should have done that sooner. "Sons and daughters of Lord Scorpion!" Platt called in a cracked, wavering voice. He sounded insane… and perhaps he was, but his shrill periods cut through the normal layers of doubt and common sense. "Our Lord's day is coming. On that day we will rise to glory with our God!" The spectators were staring at the preacher with rapt attention. Dimly Sharina could see movement converging on Platt from the other directions. She stumbled and stumbled again. Around her soldiers cursed under their breath as they turned ankles or barked shins. "The enemies of God are around us!" Platt cried. "Flee, my brethren!" "Get him, boys!" bellowed a soldier in the group approaching from the opposite end of the cemetery. Everybody was lunging and crying out. As the preacher shouted his warning, he'd turned and jumped off the side of the altar. Sharina lost sight of him, but she ran toward where he had to be. The stone boxes and terrified spectators made it an obstacle course rather than a normal race, but as expected she saw Platt an instant later; the bleached robe stood out like a flame. "There!" shouted one of Dysart's men, snaking between two soldiers and grasping the preacher by the arm.
"Don't hit him!" cried another of the civilian agents, grabbing the other shoulder and tucking Platt's head under his own arm to keep the soldiers from clubbing the fellow. "We want him able to talk!" Dysart said, his hands raised to prevent more soldiers from piling on enthusiastically. "We've got him! Stay back out of the way!" "We've got him!" called someone from the other side of the large tombs.
"Master Dysart, we've got him!" "Herehe is, by the Shepherd!" shouted a soldier well along to the east end of the cemetery. "Tell Marshal Prester we got him!" Sharina jerked the captive's white hood back. A soldier clacked open the shutter of the dark lantern he carried, throwing yellow candlelight over the prisoner's face. He was an unremarkable man with a weak chin and high forehead. "Is this Platt?"
Sharina demanded. "I'm Platt!" said the prisoner. "I'm the voice of Lord Scorpion!" "Well, I don't know, your highness," Dysart said, wringing his hands. "He matches the suspect's description, but I've never seen Platt myself." He obviously hated to make the admission, but he hadn't hesitated. As Liane had said, he was a good man. "We got the man, your ladyship!" said Prester, patting a hardwood marshal's baton into his left palm. The veteran looked like a section of oak root himself, old and supple andvery tough. "We'll need to carry him, I guess, but we didn't mark the face any." The man two soldiers were carrying behind Prester was shorter than the captive Sharina's group had caught, but his face-allowing for the spasms of agony that transfixed it at intervals-would've fit the same verbal description.
At least one of his knees had been broken. "No, I'm Platt!" said the man at Sharina's feet. "Your ladyship," chirped Burne in a thin voice that nonetheless pierced the night's confusion. The rat must've learned to project when he was with the troupe of mountebanks. "I have the real Platt here, but I can't very well bring him to you." "Who's that?" said Prester, turning his head. "Did we grab the wrong one, then?" "If you did, you weren't alone in your mistake," said Sharina, clambering over a solid rank of loculi, many of them with broken lids or no lids at all. Dysart and Ascor were at her either side. A man in a dark blue cape had fallen between two of the sultans' tombs. He was trying to crawl away. His right foot flopped loosely behind him: he'd been hamstrung. "He threw off the white robe," said Burne, perched in an alcove of the dome-topped tomb, "and had the dark one on under it.
He couldn't change his smell, though." The rat licked blood off his whiskers with apparent relish. Sharina suspected that was partly an act, but it was a very good one. The fallen man certainly thought so, because he twisted to snatch at Burne. The rat hopped away, then leaped to Sharina's shoulder. "I think we've found the real priest,"
Sharina said. "Tie his hands," Dysart said brusquely to the squad of his men now gathered around him. "We'll take him to my office in the palace." Men quickly stepped to pinion the captive. Frowning, Dysart added, "And check his foot. We don't want him bleeding out from a nicked artery before we question him." "Lord Scorpion will infallibly smite you!" Platt cried. "The true God will avenge His prophets!"
Burne laughed. "I quite like scorpions, Master Platt," he said. "They taste even better than shrimp."
Chapter 11 The bluish light in the burial cavern wasn't good, but Ilna found it was good enough as her eyes fully adapted to it. Indeed, it seemed to be getting brighter as Usun found a route for them. She wasn't willing to call it a track, let alone a path, but the fact the massive ghoul obviously came this way meant it was possible for a young woman in good health to do so as well. The little man paused to bend over a litter of fallen stalactites. "There's been an earthquake recently," he said. "Well, tremors anyway. It could be that even without us, our ghoul would have to make other arrangements than living in a cave." "An earthquake brought the riverboat I was on to the shore of this island," Ilna said. "What had been an island before the Change, anyway. I suppose there must've been some effect in Gaur and here in the cave, though I believe the quake itself was Brincisa's work." "Hutton always underrated her," said Usun as he paced on ahead.
"Still, she doesn't have the power to cause solid rock to crack. There had to have been a weakness already. Or indeed, maybe it was the Change that smashed it all like this." He laughed, though Ilna noticed that now that they were on the track of the ghoul the little man's speech and laughter were muted. He had the trick of projecting his voice without raising it. It was barely a whisper, yet she could hear each word distinctly over the rustle and deep, directionless thrumming that filled the cavern. "And one landslip will bring more, like as not," Usun said cheerfully. "Well, with luck we'll be out of here before it matters. And the ghoul, he'll be beyond worrying about anything now that we're going after him." Ilna's lips tightened in distaste. The little man was bragging, and he was bragging on her behalf as well. Many people saw nothing wrong with that. The scowl became a wry smile. In this as in so many other things, the many were wrong and Ilna os-Kenset was right. But she didn't think she was going to change their minds. Beyond the narrow throat leading to the burial cave, the cavern rose to heights that Ilna wouldn't have been able to see by the light of a torch. The rocks' own blue glow alone made them visible. Unnumbered broken stumps projected from the ceiling of smooth flow rock; some were again dripping the lime-charged water which had ages ago frozen into the huge stalactites whose shattered remains littered the floor of the cave. Many chunks were the size of tree trunks, fluted and ridged by the ages of their creation. The closest Ilna came to believing in the supernatural was to feel that stone had consciousness and that it hated her. Certainly her undoubted clumsiness in dealing with stone showed that if nothing else, its presence affected her mind. Usun could squirm under some of the columns that Ilna would've had to clamber over with difficulty, but instead the little man led by a circuitous route that required her to do nothing more difficult than stepping high or bending at the waist.